Koch-Heads Tax Oklahoma’s Homegrown Energy Producers

VIDEO

Oklahomans have been socked with a surprise from their
own, supposedly “conservative” state officials.

It seems that thousands of Sooners have been putting solar panels on their homes to save on energy costs and reduce fossil-fuel pollution. Switching to solar even allows them to generate excess electricity, which they can transmit back to the grid and earn a credit on their monthly bills.

To reward such common sense and socially-beneficial energy innovation, the state’s Republican-controlled government slapped a new “fee” – actually, a tax – on the bills of those who convert from grid takers to grid producers in the future.

This crude slap in the face came with no advance notice, no public hearings, and no legislative debate.

“It just appeared out of nowhere,” said one local solar business owner.

But this was not from “nowhere.” It came from a secretive corporate front group called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council.

In exchange for getting millions of dollars from the Koch brothers, utilities, and other dirty-energy interests, ALEC is peddling a cookie-cutter bill from state-to-state that stops homeowners from switching to solar by taxing the energy they produce. ALEC even adds insult to the injury its Koch-headed backers are doing by calling such homeowners “freeriders on the system.”

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who was in on this despicable sneak attack from the start, had her ego stroked by the Koch-financed front group last year. ALEC presented its “Thomas Jefferson Freedom Award” to Fallin for her “record of advancing … free markets… and individual liberty.”

Now we know what the Koch-ALEC complex means by “free markets” and “liberty.” They mean that corporate energy interests should be free to stifle our individual liberty.

Thomas Jefferson would be ashamed to have his name attached to anything that this cabal of corporate and governmental Kleptocrats come up with.

“Oklahoma Will Charge Customers Who Install Their Own Solar Panels,”www.thinkprogress.org, April 16, 2014.

* * * * * * * * * *

Jim Hightower is a Texan, columnist, and populist who believes that to move America from greed to greatness, we must fuel the power and the passion of our nation’s workaday majority.

Gov Exec - New York state’s chief information officer faced tough questions from lawmakers last week amid news of a recently implemented administrative policy that automatically deletes the emails of state employees after three months.Maggie Miller, was appointed state CIO by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in December, testified before a legislative committee hearing in […]

Futility Closetchirographyn. one’s own handwriting or autograph; a style or character of writingWhat is this? It’s the signature of Treasury Secretary Jack Lew. When Lew was nominated for the post in January 2013, it threatened to appear on all U.S. paper currency for the duration of his tenure.Barack Obama said, “Jack assures me that he is going to work to […]

Improbable Reseach - Amongst the formidable complexities that would be involved in transplanting someone’s brain, lurks an enigmatic question – if it were yours, would ‘you’ go with your brain? Such questions have been examined by professor Fredrik Svenaeus, of Södertörn University, Huddinge, Sweden. The professor has a chapter in ‘The Body as Gift, Resourc […]

Patriotism at the expense of another nation is as wicked as racism at the expense of another race. . . Let us resolve to be patriots always, nationalists never. Let us love our country, but pledge allegiance to the earth and to the flora and fauna and human life that it supports - one planet indivisible, with clean air,... soil and water; with liberty, justi […]

Juan Cole - It is natural that Westerners should find Israel more simpatico than Iran, given the Israeli government’s alliance with the West and Iran’s antipathy. But here are some differences between the two that are in Iran’s favor, which I point out just to balance out the unfair way the two are covered.1. Iran does not have a nuclear bomb and is signator […]

Gawker - According to the forthcoming report on the Justice Department's investigation into the Ferguson, Mo. police department for alleged civil rights violations, the department has demonstrated a history of racial profiling that has intensified race relations in the St. Louis suburb.Officials familiar with the report tell the New York Times that the […]

Alfred W. McCoy, Mother Jones - After World War II, the US used its triumph to help create the United Nations, push for the adoption of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and ratify the Geneva Conventions for humanitarian treatment in war. If you throw in other American-backed initiatives like the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organizati […]

Nature World News - Researchers revealed that in about the last 15 years, suicide rates among US adults have risen by 40 percent. This astonishing number, pertaining to those between 40 and 64 years old in the United States, could possibly be due to the economic downturn of 2007-2009, researchers say...."Relative to other age groups, a larger and increa […]

Marion Brady, Washington Post - Arthur Costa, emeritus professor at California State University, summed up the thrust of current test-based “reform” madness: “What was educationally significant and hard to measure has been replaced by what is educationally insignificant and easy to measure. So now we measure how well we taught what isn’t worth learning.”The […]